The Girl Who Lost Her Shadow

by Emily Ilett

  Francis’s voice sounded like a chiselled ice cube behind her. “Who would have thought,” he said, “that small, shadowless Gail would do some shadow experimenting of her own. Did you want to try out a new shadow, since yours has gone… missing? You should have asked me for help, Gail, if that’s what you had in mind. I am,” he paused, “particularly qualified in this area.”

  Gail finched at his words. “I wasn’t experimenting. I was trying to get my sister’s shadow back. Let her go, Francis.”

  Francis sat down across from her, stroking the canvas funnel of the shadow swallower by his side. “But what about the others? What about all those lost, hungry shadows that Gertrude released? Would you like those, too? Because if I open this up, they’ll be looking for something to hold on to. Someone without a shadow of her own,” he sneered.

  Gail drew a quick breath. “What are they?” Her voice trembled.

  “Storm shadows,” Francis said, and there was a tight edge to his voice. “Don’t you remember Storm Gertrude? She was so angry. And so loud. She wreaked havoc. Power cuts and flooding and gale-force winds.”

  Gail’s mouth fell open. “That old woman. She was a storm?”

  Francis raised his eyebrows. “I thought you might have got that far already, Gail. Gertrude is… what remains after the storm. My uncle has a misplaced obsession with these creatures. He thinks that so many storms end up on this island because of its wind and tide patterns. And when we name storms, we give them a shape. Gertrude, Henry, Imogen.”

  Gail recalled the storm-water jars on the window sill, the name of each storm written on the labels.

  Francis opened his mouth to go on, then hesitated and, for a second, Gail saw a dark cloud pass over his face. “These storms destroy everything that they can. Everything that they can hurt, they will hurt.”

  Gail stared. Were his eyes glistening?

  Before she could be sure, Francis took a deep breath, blinked and continued. “As the storm passes through, it gathers shadows in their hundreds. These are the shadows of everything that is killed or broken or hurt in the storm. Gertrude gathered many shadows,” Francis finished sourly. “As you saw.”

  Gail shivered. She’d got it wrong. He hadn’t been giving Kay’s shadow to the old woman. “You were taking them from her,” she realised slowly.

  Francis frowned. “She let me have them,” he corrected. “I’ve been looking for some storm shadows for a long time. Two shadows. A long, long time…” Francis’s voice trailed away and his hands balled into fists so tight his knuckles turned white. His face was pale and his eyes looked beyond her, dark and dangerous as black ice.

  “But you’ve got so many now,” she stammered, fear cracking her voice. “You don’t need Kay’s. You’ve got so many.”

  “I haven’t found them yet, those two shadows,” he continued quietly, ignoring her. “While I’ve been looking, I’ve tweaked and nipped and shaped and worked on something quite special.” He smiled and Gail’s stomach turned. She risked a glance behind her but there was no one else around. “And now I meet you, a shadowless girl looking for her sister’s shadow, and I think that this could be interesting.” His eyes flashed. “Now I shall investigate shadow loyalties: blood ties and family bonds. It’s the next step.”

  Gail felt her palms itch with sweat. Shadow loyalties? Blood ties? What did he mean?

  “And didn’t you say…” Francis’s hand drifted to the chest and lingered there. “Didn’t you just say that your sister’s shadow was in here?”

  Gail recoiled from the slither of his voice. What was he going to do?

  If she was a mimic octopus, now would be the time to mimic a sea snake. She would slip into a hole in the seabed and only let two of her tentacles curve through the water looking like a venomous snake. If she was a sea cucumber, she would eject her intestines and other organs to dazzle and distract the enemy. But she wasn’t either of these. She was small and afraid and all she could do was freeze her face so that her mouth wasn’t giving anything away.

  But of course that gave everything away.

  Francis’s smile stung of satisfaction and Gail squirmed from it, readying to run even as she knew he’d catch her. As she moved, her foot knocked against a jar that Francis had leant beside the shadow swallower.

  “What’s this?”

  Something tremored at the corner of Francis’s mouth and Gail knew immediately that she’d said the wrong thing. Anticipation shivered across his features as he reached for the jar.

  “This? This is something I’ve been working on for some time now. All I needed was someone without a shadow. And now it’s finally ready.” He turned the lid and his face was all edges as he grinned. “And here you are. You’re not scared of heights, are you, Gail?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two blurred bird shadows shot out of the jar as if their tail feathers were on fire. They were like winged tornadoes, all darkness and beak, and they hurtled towards Gail, pecking at her cheeks, at her neck, at the soft skin behind her knee. Then, as Francis clapped his hands, their claws took hold of her and she was being lifted higher and higher and higher in a frenzy of flight.

  Gail had nothing to hold on to. She was flipping and rolling and twisting as their dark wings moved against the sky. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her head spun and she felt horribly sick. Yes, she was afraid of heights, but she was more afraid of flying shadows. Shadows stayed on the ground. Bird shadows, aeroplane shadows, the shadows of clouds: they all floated along the ground. What had Francis done to these shadows to make them fly? Where were they taking her?

  The wind bit Gail’s face and fingers and she retched. She risked opening her eyes, then wished she hadn’t. She was far above the loch ‒ it glowed like a stranded jellyfish in the forest ‒ and the trees stretched out, back towards the caves, and on towards the south of the island. And there, way off, was the southern pointed tip, and the sea, fierce and fin-grey, crashing against the jagged cliffs.

  One of the bird shadows pulled at her feet, the other pulled her arm, lurching her upwards. They were climbing higher and higher, as if it was the only place they knew where to go. The loch blinked beneath Gail and the island shrank.

  Krrrrrrhuh Krrrrrrrhuh. A sharp clear trill rang out from somewhere below her. It was a high note, rising then falling in a chatter to end in a short trumpet call. It came again, piercingly clear, raising goose-pimples on Gail’s skin. The shadow at Gail’s arm hesitated, its head cocked towards the call. Krrrrrrhuh Krrrrrrrhuh.

  Then the bird’s wings folded and, abandoning Gail, it plummeted like an arrow down towards the sound.

  Gail gasped. A wave of sickness swept through her as she jerked upside down, the shadow at her feet struggling with the extra weight. Was Francis calling the shadows back? She’d fall hundreds of feet to the ground. She was already falling. The lone shadow was beating brokenly against their descent but it wasn’t strong enough. Wind pummelled Gail’s cheeks and the breath was torn from her lungs. She could see the mangle of branches below her in the forest growing closer. Each tree bristled with needles. She tensed against the call that she knew was coming.

  “Don’t drop me now,” she whispered to the shadow.

  Krrrrrrhuh Krrrrrrrhuh.

  Gail could see the fir cones on the trees beneath her. “Don’t let go.” Blood pounded in her ears.

  Krrrrrrhuh Krrrrrrrhuh.

  The shadow didn’t let go. It was flying her towards the bird call, but it was struggling. They were crossing the loch now; it grew fatter and wider beneath them, but the shadow was hardly moving its wings. Gail could feel its exhaustion numb her, deadening her flailing limbs.

  When the cry came again, high and magnificent and somehow familiar, they were in freefall.

  Gail didn’t expect time to slow down just because that’s what people said about falling, but it did. It was like when Sylvia pushed her off the top diving board and she plummeted for so long she’d already planned her revenge by the time she hit the pool. />
  She watched the water ripple and wait for her, and she saw, beyond Grimloch Woods, at the edge of her vision, a small rucksacked figure: Femi. He was walking behind two others. And, before that, on a boulder at the edge of the forest, she could see a bright white shape. A drawing. If she could only make out what it was—

  When she hit the loch, the water was so cold it had spikes, and her body ached from the force of the drop. Bubbles popped in her ears and she spun to right herself, gasping for air. She could feel a current tugging at her feet. Gail panicked. All she could think about was when she was seven and she’d almost drowned. She’d been knocked over by a wave and somersaulted too many times to know which way was up. How had she got out then? Her arms thrashed and she kicked her feet helplessly towards dry land. It was so far away. Then she remembered: Kay had been there. Kay had held her and pulled her out.

  Gail’s eyes stung and she swallowed more water. She had never swum without Kay before.

  She had never swum…

  She had never…

  She had…

  Strong arms reached under her armpits and heaved her towards the shore. Gail gagged and coughed out water, feeling solid ground beneath her knees. She pressed her forehead to the damp soil, gulping for air. The loch dripped from her nose and stuck the curls of her hair to her neck. Her clothes clung to her body and she shivered uncontrollably.

  Gail rubbed the water out of her eyes and looked up. It wasn’t Francis.

  The boy didn’t look much older than Femi, and he had the same shifting shadowy face as Gertrude. He was awkwardly perched on a low slab of rock, squeezing water out of his pockets. His clothes were full of pockets. He was wearing dark dungarees which wrinkled around his knees and flapped in the wind whipping around him. On each leg there were pockets attached to pockets, and each seemed to have a different fastening in place of a button. They jangled in the rising wind: shells and acorns, sea glass and seeds. Beneath the dungarees he wore a brown prickly jumper that bulged into odd shapes and sagged at the elbows. It looked like a doormat.

  Under a mass of black hair, his eyes were shy and serious and his mouth hovered between a smile and a frown. The breeze that twisted around him zigzagged through his hair and puffed out his sleeves. Gail swallowed.

  “Hi,” he said eventually, holding out a damp and slightly shaking hand. “I’m Jake.” Then, after a moment’s thinking, he added, “That must have hurt.”

  Gail grimaced as she rolled her shoulder and twisted around to the loch, beads of water dripping from her. “What happened?” Then she realised that his last words weren’t directed at her. She followed his gaze towards the huddled tangle of bird shadow still trembling at her feet.

  “Urgh! Get off me!” Gail kicked her soggy shoes against the ground as if she could scrape the shadow off.

  “Hey!” Jake pulled at her arm. “It’s frightened.”

  “So am I!” Gail retorted. “Didn’t you see what they did to me?”

  Jake pointed across the loch to a thin figure marching into the forest with the wooden chest strapped to his back. “Francis did that to you,” he said. “Not them.”

  Gail’s eyes widened as another figure, with bright orange hair, slipped from the trees and followed a few steps behind Francis as he dipped beneath the forest’s canopy. For one second, Gail was sure Mhirran looked back and saw them, but when Gail raised her hand to wave, she’d already gone.

  “Mhirran?” she breathed. Where was she…? Gail tried to struggle to her feet; Jake held her back.

  “Get OFF me!” Gail shoved Jake’s arm away. “He’s got my sister’s shadow in that chest. I’m not going to let him do anything to it.”

  But as Gail pushed against the ground, her legs swayed beneath her and she collapsed against the rock. The bird shadow clung to her tightly, its exhaustion pricking her muscles, numbing her mind and unravelling her determination. She closed her eyes and tried to remember her own reflection in the cat’s eyes, but when she opened them the bird was still there.

  “It’s the shadow.” Jake’s voice was soft.

  Gail stared at it trembling in a silky scribble on the sand.

  “It’s too sick to leave you and too weak to let you go. Bird shadows aren’t meant to fly. Francis has been working on these for weeks, trying to give them flight. It’s taken its toll on them.”

  Gail rubbed water from her cheek angrily. “I don’t understand any of it! Why did he make them take me, and then call them back so they dropped me in the water? What is he doing?”

  “Francis made the birds lift you, but he didn’t call them back,” Jake said.

  “What?”

  “It was his sister. I don’t think she meant for them to drop you; she called them down. She was trying to help you.”

  “Mhirran?” Gail stared at him. Words echoed in her mind. Did I tell you I can do bird calls and Morse code and semaphore? “It was Mhirran? You know her?”

  Jake nodded and a cautious smile grew on his face.

  “Me too,” Gail said, as a shoot of warmth wrapped itself around her stomach.

  She looked up at Jake. The wind that surrounded him whipped up his sleeve and clouds shifted across his face. His pockets moved with a mind of their own, swelling and shrinking as the shadows fidgeted inside them. Gail knew he was a storm, just like Gertrude. Francis’s words slinked inside her head: These storms destroy everything that they can. She bit her lip.

  But he knew Mhirran.

  Gail watched as Jake knelt down and brushed his fingers across the shadow trembling at her foot. His touch was tender. Gail swallowed.

  “Will you help it?” she asked. “You said it was sick. If it gets better, I might feel stronger too. Can you fix the bird so I can make it let go? So I can follow Francis and get my sister’s shadow back?”

  Jake didn’t answer at first. He got up and walked among the trees, collecting handfuls of twigs and broken branches. “How do you make a shadow stronger?” he asked, as he piled the wood on the bare dirt near Gail.

  She shook her head.

  “Light.” Jake grinned.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flames crackled and spat in the fire. Gail sat with her back towards it, twisting round so that half her face was red with heat.

  At her feet, the bird’s shadow grew slowly thicker and darker in the bright glow, its feathers fluttering like the fire. Clouds gathered thunder-grey, throwing dense veils over the sun. Gail had forgotten about the storm warnings. There was an electricity in the air, as if the sky had been twisted tight, then plucked like a guitar string. Gail’s hair flew around her ears as she chewed on an apple from her rucksack. Though her face was hot, her feet were still cold.

  Jake didn’t speak much. When he did, his eyes fidgeted but the words were slow and calm. He’d said, as he built the fire, that Mhirran would come and find them. She knew where they were. He said she’d tell them where Francis had taken Kay’s shadow. He said they had to wait for her. Gail didn’t know how he could be so sure.

  “What kind of bird is this?” Gail asked.

  Jake glanced at the shadow. “A storm petrel.”

  “I think I’ve seen it somewhere,” Gail murmured. “Not the bird itself, but…” She blinked. “It was painted onto the shed door at Mhirran’s.”

  Jake nodded and Gail shuffled closer to the fire. “The shadow’s getting stronger. I feel like I’m growing feathers.” She grimaced. “How do you stand it? You must have hundreds of shadows in those pockets. Can’t you get rid of them?”

  Jake squatted on the ground. His mouth was lopsided as he shrugged. “No,” he said simply. “Unless I found someone without a shadow, who could take them, or I gave them to Francis, like Gertrude does.” He glanced at Gail. “But I’d never do that. I did this to them, so…” He looked away. “I owe them something.”

  Gail bit her lip, and tried to remember what stories she’d heard of the storm called Jake. How much damage did he cause? “Do you have to be so bad?” she ventured. “Mum
says the storms are getting worse.”

  Jake stared at her. “We don’t want to. But the air is changing. You’re changing it,” he said, stirring up the fire with a stick.

  Gail tossed away the apple core and stared at the bird’s shadow quivering at her feet. Her arms tingled and she could almost feel feathers flattening across her scalp. It frightened her.

  “Remember who I am,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m Gail. I’m Mhirran’s friend.” Her eyes closed in concentration. A smile wobbled at the side of her mouth. She was doing it. She’d remembered herself. Kay would be so—

  Gail choked, her eyes shocked open. Panic bubbled in her throat. Kay. She’d lost her shadow again. What would Francis do with it? A sickness rose in her stomach and she leaned forward to stop her head from spinning. When she looked up, the bird’s shadow was still at her feet and Jake’s eyes were wide with worry.

  “What’s wrong with it?” she burst out, the pufferfish prickling inside her. And then, quieter: “What’s wrong with me?”

  Gail didn’t think he could have heard her. But he did. He cleared his throat awkwardly and a wind whipped through his curls.

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten where your edges are,” Jake said carefully. “Forgotten what shape you make.” He shrugged. “If you’ve lost your shape, you can’t make a shadow.”

  Gail snorted and threw another branch into the flames angrily, but Jake’s words swam inside her and she heard an echo of Mhirran’s voice. You’ve lost yourself, Gail. You can’t cast a shadow if you’re not really here.

  “It’s okay,” Jake said simply, his hand hovering at her shoulder. “You’ll get it back.”

  Gail shrugged his hand away. “Nothing’s okay. Francis has got Kay’s shadow, and I can’t get rid of this stupid bird and he could do anything—” Her voice broke and she jabbed at the fire. “He’s a monster.”

  Grey smudges slipped across Jake’s face. In the strained silence, Gail could hear the wind rising to a howl, rattling the tree canopy above.